3M Wants Full Eighth Circuit to Undo Bair Hugger Suits’ Revival

3M Co. wants the full Eighth Circuit to revisit a decision that reinstated nearly 6,000 lawsuits by patients alleging they developed severe infections from the Bair Hugger warming system used during joint replacement surgeries.

The appeals court panel applied an Eighth Circuit expert evidence rule that’s “so skewed in favor of admissibility that it precludes the exercise of any judgment at all” by trial judges who are meant to be gatekeepers in evaluating reliability, 3M said in a filing.

In August, the panel said the plaintiffs’ general-causation experts, who linked the Bair Hugger to patient infections, were wrongly excluded.

It ...